Pet Peeves in Fiction Writing (Part 1: Prophecies)

When it comes to reading fiction or watching some nice fiction on TV, there are few things that make me more frustrated than hearing about a prophecy.  Prophecies tend to crop up all over fiction, especially if there is any level of fantasy involved, often to the detriment of the overall story.

Do not confuse prophecy with foreshadowing.  Foreshadowing is one of the oldest and most effective tools in storytelling, and when done best it is subtle, an item or sentence introduced in a way that fits so perfectly into the back of the reader's/viewer's mind that it goes entirely unnoticed on the conscious level, and, like a bomb perfectly planted, detonates to create a more perfect explosion at the foundation of the audience's understanding, releasing a slew of revelations and reinterpretations of the story they've just experienced.

Prophecy is different.  Prophecy just says what's going to happen.  There's no mystery (not really), and no work necessary on the part of the writer to actually build a character up.  Prophecy just tells you that this character is amazing (i.e. the Chosen One).  It tells you, "Hey, watch this guy, he's really going to be something."  And that breaks one of the critical rules of storytelling: show, don't tell.

In short, prophecy is lazy.  Most of the time.

The way I see it, there are generally two kinds of prophecies: the good one and the bad one.  The Good Prophecy is a foretelling of some darkness that is coming, but there is hope that a hero will emerge, usually with some defining birthmark and a trusty Sword of Truth, and he will cast down the Dark One.  The Bad Prophecy kind of starts by telling of a Dark One first, someone who will rise up and cover the whole world in a thousand-year darkness--in this case, we may not be told about the hero, but we know the story can't just end with a thousand-year darkness, so we (the audience) are left thinking, "Okay, so, who's gonna stop this from happening?"

The next chapter, or scene in the movie, is usually an introduction to the hero.  (You know what comes next.  If you don't, just refer to the prophecy, which explained everything.)

In either case, the writer has essentially already told you what's going to happen.  You're waiting for the hero with the right birthmark to show up, and you know that, no matter what happens to him, he will make it and defeat the Dark One.  There's no guessing, no suspense, no maybes or surprises, he's just going to make it.

Also, do you like spoilers?  I don't.  So, if you're like me (and I think most people hate spoilers), and you don't like people telling you the end of a story and every detail in between, then why the hell would you want some soothsayer in the movie telling you what's going to happen?

Here's how it goes, and stop me when this sounds familiar:  You hear about an interesting movie, you go with your friends to see it, maybe pay for your girlfriend or kids to get in, you go sit down, listen to some fortuneteller on the screen tell you all about a prophecy of a "white-haired man, dark of skin, with eyes blue as the sea" who will come and vanquish all evil...and then you watch exactly that happen.  It's no different than just having read this paragraph with me telling you, only now you owe me $10 for admission, $20 if you paid for someone else to get in, $35 if you paid for food and drinks while reading it, and $40 if you read this paragraph in 3D (I have to charge you for the glasses).

In other words, you pay to watch someone's prophecy unfold.  You paid for the movie and the spoiler in one go.

What's worse about the prophecy, no matter if it's a Good one or Bad one, is that it makes it so that the character doesn't even have to try.  He (or she) is just going to make it.  No matter what.  They couldn't fail if they tried, because the prophecy says they won't.  This, in my opinion, invariably leads to an underdeveloped character, and characters that are not at all real or complex.

Now, I have to say right now that if you don't like real or complex characters, such as those in George R. R. Martin's superb Song of Ice and Fire series, then prophecy probably seems okay to you.

"But Chad," you're probably saying, "Martin does use prophecy in his writing!"  To this, I say, "Not really."  By that, I mean he uses mostly what I would call foreshadowing, and if there is a prophecy it's usually so twisted that no one could make hide nor hair out of it (think of what Daenarys saw in the House of the Undying, those images were so strange they might've been anything, but it turns out she did see a couple of important events foretold).  George R. R. Martin is the exception that proves the rule, that rare voice that shows how prophecy ought to be done if you're going to do it at all (again, if you enjoy surprises, no spoilers, and complex characters that might become evil or good or, as real people become, somewhere in between).

Prophecy eliminates a character's ability to be multifacted beings, as real people are, and instead pigeonholes them, makes them either this or that, and, worst of all, it tells us the end.

So, to recap, if you don't mind spoilers, and if you don't mind simplistic, predictable characters (and I'm not insulting you if you do, for there is no accounting for taste), then this article probable makes no sense to you.  This next bit may make even less senses, so...here we go!

Another problem is when so much importance is placed on a prophecy that there's no way the story can live up to it.  For this reason, prophecies often become so convoluted that they rarely even make sense.  Watch the last two seasons of Battlestar Galactica, and you'll know what I'm talking about.  So much importance placed on a prophecy about a child in an opera house...and then it went nowhere.  I mean, absolutley nowhere.  The whole prophecy just led up to the kid walking into the flight command center (which was an opera house in the visions for...ya know...reasons), and...that's it.  That's like if you had a dream about being a kid running through an abandoned warehouse and sticking a stick through a keyhole in an old decrepit door, and somehow that foretells you sticking the gas nozzle into your car tomorrow.  Yeah, that prophecy was that mundane.

The last thing I will say is that I understand the argument of the archetypal hero.  I know that it's classic, that it's been repeated down through the ages and blah blah blah, I've heard it all.  I'm not saying you have to hate it, I'm saying great stories, such as the Original Star Wars Trilogy, was told entirely without prophecy, and look how amazing it was.  Then watch the Prequel Trilogy, with all its Chosen One talk, and...yyyyyyeah.

(to be continued in Pet Peeves in Fiction Writing (Part 2: Super Quippy Dialogue, AKA the NCIS Dilemma)

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